And finally, I’ve always drawn a great deal of moral comfort from Humpty Dumpty. The part I like the best? “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” That’s because there is no Humpty Dumpty, and there is no God. — George Carlin

SCHOOL PRAYER, HAWAIIAN STYLE

Hawaiian Punch: School Prayer Isn’t So Great When It’s Someone Else’s Prayer

Many conservative Christians bemoan the lack of officially sanctioned prayers in public schools. Things have gone too far, they argue. The Supreme Court has even banned prayers over the loudspeaker before football games!

Advocates of church-state separation have patiently pointed out that even football games are school events where all students and their families should feel welcome. Pressuring people to stand and acknowledge a prayer outside their faith tradition just isn’t right.

Support for the separationist position came recently from an unusual place: a conservative Christian writing on the far-right Web site WorldNetDaily.

In a letter to the editor, Gary Christenot recalled his time in the Air Force stationed at a base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The area was somewhat isolated and dominated by Buddhists and followers of the Shinto faith.

Christenot wrote about attending a high school football game there. The Baptist family was dismayed when a Buddhist priest was called upon to offer the invocation “to god-head figures that our tradition held to be pagan.”

Wrote Chistenot, “We were frozen in shock and incredulity! What to do? To continue to stand and observe this prayer would represent a betrayal of our own faith and imply the honoring of a pagan deity that was anathema to our beliefs. To sit would be an act of extreme rudeness and disrespect in the eyes of our Japanese hosts and neighbors, who value above all other things deference and respect in their social interactions. …